What will you do after tech?
Short summary
A Lobsters discussion where people who've left tech careers share what they actually do next — most keep coding for fun, some pivot to teaching or environmental work, and burnout on the job itself (not the tech) is the common culprit.
- People rarely fully retire from tech; they burn out on meetings and corporate structures, not on programming itself, so many continue coding through open source or personal projects.
- Energy transition work offers experienced engineers meaningful impact (electrifying transport and heating accounts for ~60% of emissions vs. data centers at ~1%), appealing to those tired of optimizing ecommerce platforms.
- Post-tech plans vary widely — teaching, music, writing, gardening, environmental activism — but the thread shows most people need some form of purpose and "being needed" to stay mentally healthy in retirement.
Full summary
The thread opens with someone asking what tech workers do after they leave the industry, noting that true retirement from tech is rare—most people burn out and move on to something else. One retired person shares they stopped working in 2021 but kept coding for open source projects and managing a complex home network, finding they loved tech itself but hated the meetings and corporate structure. Others chime in with similar patterns: a neighbor traveling while still tinkering with hardware, a 61-year-old planning to code and write fiction in retirement, and someone planning to split time between foundational open source work and part-time teaching. The common thread is that leaving tech as a career doesn't mean leaving tech entirely—the burnout is usually about the job, not the work.
A significant detour happens when someone mentions the energy transition as a meaningful alternative. They describe work on domain modeling for electrical meter systems across countries, framing it as genuinely consequential because the energy sector accounts for roughly 60% of human CO2 emissions versus 1% for all data centers combined. This sparks interest from others tired of optimizing ecommerce platforms, though questions arise about whether actual jobs exist in that space. The conversation hints at a real hunger among tech workers for work that feels like it matters beyond quarterly metrics.
The thread devolves into a moderation dispute about self-promotion guidelines, then wraps with scattered retirement fantasies: oil painting, novels, gardening, music, geology, GIS work, even scallop farming. One person mentions struggling to imagine another 20 years in their current role and worrying they've lost the drive to code outside work. Another notes they love building things but discovered research and academia aren't for them—a useful corrective for anyone romanticizing a pivot to AI research without actually liking research itself.